weather

Gusty

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I plucked this one out of the Pictorama library (aka pile on my desk) today as it is quickly turning wintery and windy here in New York City. I itch to say it is premature, however late November is technically more than fair game. We saw some snow the other day – for about 20 minutes it was snow globe shaken glory out the window. It ended and turned sunny by the time Kim and I exited for our morning walk – he walks me part of the way to my office most days, a new practice I find very enjoyable.

I have not yet fetched the down jackets from their basement lair. Instead I have been layering bits and pieces on and topping with a big scarf. (I displayed said scarf – and gloves! – in my cat clothing mania post last week which you can find here if you missed it.) I am heading to the west side to a dinner party tonight so I think I have put it off long enough and I need to spring it today and let them commence their winter service.

I have purchased a warm black wool hat which I have worn and already lost and found and lost again. I think I need to purchase my hats in brighter colors perhaps, making them harder to loose. Anyway, I believe it to still be in this very small apartment so it should turn up. I am eyeing my boots much earlier in the year than usual, more for warmth than for wet.

A recent attempt to provide the cats with a heated bed has been somewhat unsuccessful. Blackie prefers my spot on the bed (preferably slipping into it while still warm from me in the morning). Cookie will sleep in the bed – however with the heat off and a towel lining it so it doesn’t smell like whatever it smells like which they have indicated stinks and will not do.

Blackie this very morning, having hopped into my spot immediately upon my vacating it. In fact, truth is he sat on top of me, willing me to get up!

Meanwhile, today’s card is a Maurice Boulanger design, A Gusty corner in Catland. It was sent on March 25, 1904 from Newcastle-on-Tyne to Miss L. Poppleton, 19 Henry Street, Sheildfield. So I think it was a card appropriate to the weather there and then. The note on the back simply says, Dear Lizzie, Do not come tonight as I have to go straight home. come in on Wednesday if possible. Nellie XXXXX. Amazing to think of a time when there were enough mail deliveries in a day that you could send such a note with the expectation it would get there in time! It was the text of its day.

I have written about Boulanger before (prior posts can be found here and here) as he along with Manzer (a choice example here) were the worshippers at the Wain alter. In reality Boulanger was a contemporary of Wain and definitely working the same side of the street with his jolly anthropomorphic kits, perhaps a bit less maniacal than Louis Wain’s. (As I say that I realize that I have some pretty whacky examples coming up for future posts however. He can get his crazy on too.) Alongside Wain he rose to prominence in the early aughts of the 20th century.

This card utilizes just black and white (and therefore gray) in the printing. Kim and I were just talking the other day about how it wasn’t that long ago that any color, let alone full color, printing was substantially more expensive. (I always have to remind myself when printing things at work that this is no really longer true.) So it was a clever design for a slightly less expensive line of cards is my thought.

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

Above is another Boulanger from my collection utilizing only black and white. The post for this New Year’s greeting can be read here. Perhaps the same park scene but in full blown, snowy winter? No human sartorial splendor for these felines – they are just in their fur (hope it is warm enough) and only one bow between the three for decorative effect.

This quartet of kitties was out for a stroll in some sartorial splendor when the wind whipped up tossing hats and skirts astray! A monocle goes flying and we are moments from an accident as this puss also chases his hat while stepping carelessly off a curb. The gentlemen cats in question both sport top hats and while the little girl’s is well secured, moma kitty fears that her chapeau will take flight as well. Interesting that the two men cats have bushy and evident tails (Blackie just puffed his up this morning when a pile of papers fell under Kim’s desk – quite a look!) and the girls here keep their under their ample frocks.

The scene reminds me of Central Park but we will suppose a park in France or Britain was the likely origin. (The card was printed in Austria but the copyright language all in English so I am thinking a British product.)

The word on the street is that it is a cold and snowy winter ahead here in the Northeast of the United States. I have a stock of wintery cards ahead so I guess I say let it snow!

Peggy and Ruth

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I just found this photo, purchased a little over a year ago. Somehow it has been overlooked, but today seems like the right day for it finally. For many of us this past week was smacked with a weather front we now refer to as a polar vortex. While it plunged our compatriots in the midwest into negative double digit weather, closing offices and schools and terribly even killing a number of people, here in New York it was just very, very cold, requiring many more layers of clothes than we wanted to wear and waddling like down covered penguins as a result.

In the midst of it we experienced something called a snow squall, which I admittedly liked the name of very much, but the experience of a bit less. I saw it from a conference room at work, overlooking the south end of Columbus Circle and within view of the southwest most corner of Central Park. We could barely see out the window and the wind was so bad it snowed upward! For a little more than an hour it poured snow and pounded Manhattan. Visions of pioneers struggling through sudden deadly storms came to mind, although we remained safe in our office tower perch. It resulted in a sheet of ice covering all the sidewalks which somehow the denizens of buildings responsible for snow removal didn’t see fit to address.

Of course my relationship to bad weather was quite different as a child, as I am guessing is true for at least most of us who experience childhood in the suburbs. For me, childhood hurricanes brought floods caused by the nearby river and had a holiday effect, a cause for excitement as water rushed around the house and under the floors, chilling them, ducks quacking at the backdoor. (I think about that now and how my mother was often home alone with us, three small children, when it happened – Dad off at work in New York or traveling as often as not. Mom was and remains, one tough cookie.)

Snow was of course the best because it resulted not only in a day off from school, but in ice skating (that same river flowed into smaller tributaries that froze solid) and sledding. Now, before I create an image of a sylvan childhood of Rockwell-like jolliness, I will state that as a child the meteorological conditions seemed to rarely result in weather that both closed school and was prolonged enough and appropriate for skating and/or sledding. It seemed to be something you were always waiting for that rarely occurred – making it all the better when it did.

Born in February blizzard, I have experienced many snowy birthdays. I will not opine on them right now, but frequently canceled birthday plans created a love-hate relationship with the white stuff. However, I do remember getting a new sled for, I believe, my eleventh birthday, and even without snow on the ground that year it remains a splendid gift that lives in memory.

While this photo was taken twenty-one years before I popped onto the scene, it could very easily been me and my sister Loren, and our cat Snoopy. We owned this very type sled and peaked caps, just like Peggy and Ruth. Snoopy was white with black cow spots, instead of this nice tabby type, and I believe Loren and I at 19 months between us, were closer in age than Peggy and Ruth appear to be. (A nod to Edward who would have shown up on the scene later in the game.) I have trouble imagining a photo of us this angelically posed – I believe most of the snow photos of Loren and I have us fighting, appropriately enough. Still, I purchased it thinking of us.

Unsurprisingly, at the moment the long-range forecast has precipitation predicted for my February 11 birthday. Last year it was a torrential, icy rain – none of the jolliness of snow I am afraid. I am working next weekend, but taking my birthday off to enjoy with Kim and cats here, snow or not, at Deitch Studio.